[Ads-l] Very Slight Antedating of "Lost Cause" (Southern Mythology)

[Shapiro, Fred]

The citation I posted is certainly unremarkable in the sense that is a one-day antedating.  But Edward A. Pollard is widely regarded as the coiner of the term and I was following the OED in treating Pollard's earliest use as the coinage.  Wikipedia has a sizable "Origin of the term" section of the "Lost Cause of the Confederacy" entry, focusing squarely on Pollard:

Origin of the term
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Edward_A._Pollard%2C_National_Cyclopedia_of_American_Biography.jpg/250px-Edward_A._Pollard%2C_National_Cyclopedia_of_American_Biography.jpg]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_A._Pollard,_National_Cyclopedia_of_American_Biography.jpg>Edward A. Pollard<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_A._Pollard>, author of the 1866 book The Lost Cause
The term "Lost Cause" was sometimes applied by writers observing the Confederate war effort against the larger industrial might of the North. It appeared in the title of an 1866 book by the Virginian journalist Edward A. Pollard<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_A._Pollard>, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates.[23]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#cite_note-23> According to Pollard, the term was inserted at the request of his publisher in New York City, who feared that Pollard's original title, History of the War, would not be catchy enough to sell books. The "Lost Cause" title sold well.[24]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#cite_note-24> Pollard promoted many of the themes of the Lost Cause such as the claim that states' rights were the cause of the war and that Southerners were forced to defend themselves against Northern aggression. He dismissed the role of slavery in starting the war and understated the cruelty of American slavery, even promoting it as a way of improving the lives of Africans. Pollard's revisionist history continues to have an effect on how slavery and the Civil War are taught in the United States.[25]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#cite_note-25>[26]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#cite_note-26> For example, in 1866 Pollard wrote:
We shall not enter upon the discussion of the moral question of slavery. But we may suggest a doubt here whether that odious term "slavery", which has been so long imposed, by the exaggeration of Northern writers, upon the judgement and sympathies of the world, is properly applied to that system of servitude in the South, which was really the mildest in the world; which did not rest on acts of debasement and disenfranchisement, but elevated the African, and was in the interest of human improvement; and which, by the law of the land, protected the negro in life and limb, and in many personal rights, and, by the practice of the system, bestowed upon him a sum of individual indulgences, which made him altogether the most striking type in the world of cheerfulness and contentment.[27]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#cite_note-27>
Pollard in The Lost Cause and its sequel The Lost Cause Regained drew inspiration from John Milton<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton>'s Paradise Lost<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost> with the intention of portraying the pre-war South as a "paradise" that was lost in its defeat.[28]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#cite_note-Schivelbusch2003_58-28>

Fred Shapiro


________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2025 12:17 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Very Slight Antedating of "Lost Cause" (Southern Mythology)

Seems to me this is an unremarkable use of "lost cause."  The Confederacy
turned out literally to be a lost cause.

"The Lost Cause," however. as a sentimentalized, lexicalized concept, is
another story.  In fact, only the 1948 and 2018 exx. in OED strike me as
exemplifying this sense. (With 1866 possibly the ultimate inspiration.)
"The lost cause of the Confederacy" is hardly a lexicalization of the "Lost
Cause."

Possibly not the earliest, but early and unmistakable (Newspapers.com):

1868 _Wheeling Intelligencer_ (Sept. 28) 2: A GREAT SPEECH By [the
Unionist] Ex-Gov. Peirpoint OF VIRGINIA ... by I show you these facts as
showing the moving impulse of the "Lost Cause."... The old system of the
"Lost Cause" strangles commerce, discourages agriculture, denies education
to the poor, and destroys the liberty of masses.

JL

On Mon, May 12, 2025 at 10:41 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Lost Cause (OED, 2., 1865 [16 Nov.])
>
> 1865 Mobile Daily Times 15 Nov. 4/2 (Newspapers.com)
>
> The undersigned is without means to prosecute so large a work ... He
> therefore proposes to publish it by subscription ... and he hopes every
> true man in the South will, as subscriber or contributor, make himself a
> party to an enterprise to rescue the lost cause of the Confederacy ...
> EDWARD A. POLLARD, of Virginia.  New York, Nov. 1, 1865.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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